Poor, patient Katie shot this same concept with me three times, spanning almost a solid year from the first take to the last one. I assured her each time we reshot it that the problem was not her, because it honestly wasn’t. This was a case of me having a very clear vision in my head of how the image should look, but not taking the time to inspect it closely enough. Each of the other two tries at this shoot came close, but there was always something just enough wrong with it that I knew I needed to reshoot it to be truly happy with the final images.

Flora Awakens

Here they finally are! Flora is a DreamWorld character I’ve had in my head for a long time; an obvious statement given how many times I’ve tried to capture her visually, but much longer considering all the time I spent conceptualizing her and building her elaborate costume.

Flora was a nature spirit to me, the bringer of spring, renewal and life. I strongly pictured that wherever she walked, flowers would grow in her footsteps. I thought this was quite original until I remembered…

When I was young, I watched (over and over and over) an animated version of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, which remains my favorite film version of the novel to this day (it’s the only version which, in my opinion, gives Aslan a truly “golden” voice as CS Lewis describes it, for one thing). In this take on the story, when Aslan is resurrected and romps with Lucy and Susan, flowers spring up wherever he steps, leaving a trail of paw-shaped floral clusters.

Ok, so the idea wasn’t exactly mine. But at least I realized where I’d gotten the idea before I started calling it completely my own!

I started with a beautifully embroidered corset top at a local second-hand store. I spent a while deciding if I would keep it as part of my personal wardrobe or use it for this costume, and the costume obviously won. I decided I had enough pretty things that I don’t wear often enough as is, and it really added a lovely depth to the costume with its subtle ornateness. The other base piece of clothing was a lovely, fluffy aqua-colored skirt made from layers of the lightest, softest netting. This was another thing I had to seriously debate weather to sacrifice to the costume gods, but in the end, I decided I could always buy another one for myself.

Over the aqua skirt, I added an airy overskirt of ivory tulle, lifting it in two spots at the front with a small spray of flowers to hold it in place. I added a layer of tulle around the top of the bodice as well to give flowers more to hold on to and also give it a dropped shoulder.

Creating is usually a messy process.

Next step, as it so often is, was to cover it with flowers! My handy hot glue gun proved its worth again. I tried to pick flowers which enhanced the shape I was creating in the clothing. The wisteria dripping down from the shoulders seemed so perfect to me!

Once I had the front looking pretty much like how I’d pictured it, I started working on the most exciting part; the train!

This dress’ train started at the top of the back and went all the way down to the bottom of the skirt; a very old-fashioned and somewhat unusual style of train. Since I knew I was going to have use my flowers carefully and wisely to make them cover everything I wanted them to, I hemmed and hawed over this part a lot; pinning flowers in place, moving them around, flipping this one and that one… Eventually I just had to start gluing flowers in place and trust that I would figure it out as I went.

The almost-finished train!

After I was satisfied with the dress, I started working on the flower footprints.

Fabric feet

I traced the shape of my feet onto paper and then cut four pairs of feet out of some nice dark green material I had leftover from another project. Again, the next step was to cover with flowers!

This gave me a total of eight feet. I would have liked to have done a few more, but I was running out of flowers, so I had to make due.

Beware of hot glue drippings. I still have a faint scar from where this guy landed a year ago.

Apparently I didn’t take any making-of photos of the flower pieces for Katie’s face, hair and hands, which is too bad. For the pieces in her hair, on her eyebrows and ears, I cut rough shapes from a thin sheet of plastic; I knew the glue would melt the plastic where it came in direct contact, but it would provide just enough of a frame to make my life easier. They were very free-form creations, which I put together on my foam head to make sure the proportions were at least somewhat reasonable. I had planned on cutting them slightly to fit Katie’s face when the shooting day came, but they ended up fitting her beautifully! The pieces in her hair were held on with bobby pins and the ones of her face stayed on with a little help from garment tape.

Katie being adorable and showing off her new prosthetics.

Her “hand flowers,” as I was calling them, were meant to show life just springing off her, literally dripping from her fingers. These were only constructed the day before the third shoot, and I loved what they added to the images, so perhaps it’s lucky that the first two takes didn’t turn out 🙂 These were very, very easy to make. I tied a loop of clear, stretchy cord to slide over Katie’s palms. From each of these loops I tied three lengths of monofilament thread and randomly glued little petals and blossoms to them so it looked like they were falling.

At this point Katie and I shot the concept… then we reshot it… and then we finally shot it for a third time, which was the one that stuck. It goes to show, if something doesn’t go right the first time, just try and use it as a learning experience! With Katie, we always have a fun time, no matter what we shoot, so when concepts aren’t perfect right away, I haven’t wasted anything. I had a good time with my friend, and I hopefully learned something about how I don’t want my final image to look!

With that said, allow me to show you the finished trio of images, with detail shots beneath each of them!

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Joy Of Renewal

Joy Of Renewal – detail

Joy Of Renewal – detail

Life Eternal

Life Eternal – detail

Life Eternal – detail

And here’s a few more detail shots to cover all my bases!

Flora shoot details

Flora shoot details

Flora shoot details

Flora shoot details

Flora Shoot detail

If you have a favorite of the three, I’d love to hear your opinion!

Lastly, before I go, I’d like to mention the lovely interview I did with the well-respected photography site PhotoFocus! I was very honored to be their Photographer Of The Week 🙂

Thank you, PhotoFocus!! And thank you to all my readers and supporters! And an extra big, special thank you to Katie Johnson for being so patient and willing to keep redoing this one concept with me and knocking it out of the park every time!